It’s easy to forget about all the things that previous Texans and other Americans invested in so that future generations would have a better life: for instance, the design of interstate freeways, research into vaccines for polio and smallpox, the building of schools, hospitals and universities. These investments, made by citizens decades ago, were part of the American tradition of working hard to make this a better place for our children and grandchildren.

We are at another point in history where we have to make a choice about what kind of Texas we will leave to the future. The choice in front of us today is whether we will continue to degrade the environment by how we produce and use energy. Will we take steps now to put the environment on the right track and give our kids a fighting chance at a world with a stable climate?

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is hosting a listening session Thursday at the downtown Dallas library to take comments from the public on reducing carbon pollution from power plants.

Every year, power plants dump more than 2 billion tons of dangerous carbon pollution and other toxic pollutants into the air. These pollutants worsen climate change, which can increase the number of red and orange bad air days and trigger more asthma attacks in children and more heart attacks among seniors.

Climate change is also fueling more extreme and deadly weather events like the drought, heat waves and wildfires that we have experienced in Texas and across the West the last three years. The last decade has been the hottest on record, and scientists tell us that there is no question that our climate is changing. It’s time for our leaders to support action to stop it.

For too long, the oil companies and the powerful coal barons in Wyoming and West Virginia have persuaded some lawmakers to deny climate science and to allow polluters to dump carbon pollution into our air without limit. It is time for the people’s voices to be heard.

There is good news about climate change. We can do something about it. In fact, we’ve already made some progress in controlling the carbon pollution that threatens our climate, and emissions across the U.S. are slowly coming down. Texas, unfortunately, still leads the nation in carbon emissions, and reductions are not happening fast enough to avoid truly catastrophic climate disruption.

But it’s not too late. There are technologies today that can reduce carbon pollution — both nationally and here in the Lone Star State.

We have a shared responsibility to future generations of Texans to leave them with a better planet than the one we inherited from our parents. By making polluters pay for their pollution, we will begin to level the playing field for the wind and solar energy companies that are today producing electricity in Texas with zero pollution and with zero need for our precious water resources.

If we don’t act now, we run the risk of the drought of the last several years and all the other extreme weather becoming the new normal for our children. That doesn’t have to happen. This is our generation’s chance to take responsibility and make decisions that will create a better future. We cannot afford to squander it.

David Griggs is a Dallas resident and member of the executive committee of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. He may be contacted at texvol@aol.com. Nia Martin-Robinson is an organizer with the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. She may be contacted at nia.martin-robinson@sierraclub.org.

How to participate

What: EPA’s Dallas listening session to hear ideas regarding how to curb pollution at existing power plants. This is one of 11 sessions to be held across the U.S.

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